LimeBike Raises $12M From Andreessen To Solve The 'Last Mile' Problem

When Andreessen-Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan goes from his Portola Valley home to San Francisco, he avoids driving as much as possible. Sometimes, he'll drive close to the city and then take an Uber or Lyft to get around. Other times, he'll drive the Daly City BART and then use public transit. But always there's that lingering issue: traveling that last mile to his destination.

It's this need for better forms of transit to travel that last mile that got Jordan interested in LimeBike, a San Mateo-based bike-sharing startup founded by venture capitalists Toby Sun and Brad Bao. On Tuesday, LimeBike announced completing a $12-million Series A round led by Andreessen and including investments from IDG, DCM and Immersion Ventures. Sun and Bao will do a soft launch of LimeBike in the Bay Area in early April (the exact date is TBD).

Here's how it works:

The key to what makes LimeBike different from other popular bike-share programs is that, in theory at least, it won't rely on centralized hubs. Instead, there will be many parking spots scattered across the city, and using the LimeBike app you can locate where to pick up the bike and where you can leave it closest to your destination. The cost of a single ride will be $1. LimeBike claims that the low cost of individual rides could boost the number of rides people take, and thereby ultimately increase revenue.

"If all of the sudden you take the friction out of the bike experience and make the bikes more convenient, better located and cheaper, I think it could really take off," Jordan says. The global bike share industry could be worth upwards of $6 billion by 2020, according to a report by Roland Berger Consultancy. But right now, just 1% of trips taken in the U.S. are done by bike.